Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys. I was working on a boat yesterday & the wind was howling. The little 8 blade fan on the sailboat next to me kept humming non stop. All the while I kept thinking I live on a little hill & get a constant breeze from the sea... Wind powered aquaponics!. I had a quick conversation with the owner of the boat, and told me it was a pretty old Ampair system. Long story short, could I at least partially run my ap on air power & batteries? Where can I find idiot proof information to calculate how much power / how large a system I'd need? Will this cost me an arm & a leg? Also, could I combine solar & air? (I use solar power for my water heater year round) I'm getting quite ahead of myself, as I'm yet to finish my system, but I like thinking ahead!

Thanks always,
Felix

Try searching for 'wind data <your area>' on google.

Alternatively, you may be able to find a wind data logger - but I dont think they are all that cheap.

These should give you an idea of how much power could be produced by a 1kw, 2kw etc system.

This website may be of interest to you.

http://www.thebackshed.com/windmill/home.asp

It is a treasure trove of info for those kinds of projects.

I think it would be good to have to supplement the system but I am not sure if I would want to rely on it as the sole power source. Too many moving parts.

I was thinking of having extra air stones attached to solar panels, that way on a hot sunny day the water would get extra oxygen when it needed it but not so much on colder cloudy days when the water would be cooler and hold more oxygen.

Windmills run for years without any maintenance.

A backup would be a good idea though

My dad has one in the UK, he fought the local council to get it approved. I hasn't broken down but it isn't the gold mine he was hoping for, it needs a high wind to get it going, he lives on the coast but not close enough apparently!

Edit to add: He uses his to generate electricity. If you use a windmill to get the pump pumping directly then it should be fine

I did some stuff on wind power a while ago, just for the sake of learning about it (don't bother looking at my stuff on wind power. The closest thing to a useful contribution I managed, was a furling model windmill made of drinking straws)

I found the back shed site was good, and this site is also good...

http://www.scoraigwind.com/

Hugh is a bit of a champion of wind power, and would be a very good place to start if you wanted to make your own.

Watch out for stuff sold online. Some of it is probably good, but some stuff stands out as being very poorly designed even from what little I know. Almost all of it makes up numbers out of thin air. There is a known amount of energy in a lump of wind traveling at a particular speed. Many ads online claim to be able to harvest much more than the amount there is.

The description on wikipedia of Betz' law is worth a read before you buy anything. Even a vague understanding (or even less than a vauge understanding in my case) of Betz' law will proof you against most of the outrageous claims of efficiency that some people state in their ads.



If you find a member on here that knows wind stuff (or anything else), can you please invite them to put up a post on the members skills thread.

Lots of good historical data in easy to understand formats from Wolfram|Alpha.. Here's some local data to me.. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wi ... +last+week

This information, once you get it for your location, will help you size the right turbine for your wind conditions and give you an idea of how much wind power you're actually going to get.. make sure to do an annual search as well so you know if you're going to need a top-up (like solar) for your system if you get long periods of low wind.

Cheers
KS